Bag a classic this weekend

Hope you enjoyed meeting Charles Ware and his Morris Minor Centre in the magazine column this week (Autocar, 18 March, p80). Ware would prefer that we all think of car ownership in decades, rather than the short-term approach that the modern car industry lives by.
Now, I know you may not fancy a Moggy, but there are plenty of other classics out there which are every bit as interesting and easy to look after. Provided you are not fighting a rear guard action against rust, older cars are a pleasure to own. Mostly because the bits that go wrong you can usually sort out with a spanner and a screwdriver rather than a laptop.

Hope you enjoyed meeting Charles Ware and his Morris Minor Centre in the magazine column this week (Autocar, 18 March, p80). Ware would prefer that we all think of car ownership in decades, rather than the short-term approach that the modern car industry lives by.

Now, I know you may not fancy a Moggy, but there are plenty of other classics out there which are every bit as interesting and easy to look after. Provided you are not fighting a rear guard action against rust, older cars are a pleasure to own. Mostly because the bits that go wrong you can usually sort out with a spanner and a screwdriver rather than a laptop.

Parts can also be pretty reasonable price-wise. Classic insurance is a pittance, and pre-1973 models are zero-rated for road tax. On top of these upsides there is also the sheer pleasure of driving something characterful. So, as spring hits us and all the classics come out of hibernation, go and snap one up.

A Caterham Seven is an option, even someone’s half-baked kit copy that you could spend the summer sorting out. Obviously, old Minis and Land Rovers are great too.

Rovers are wonderful as well: a Rover 2000 or a P5 coupe is a great way to travel. You can go foreign, of course, but Citroen DSs are getting pricey and, oddly, 2CVs have all but disappeared and very hard to find, according to my local Citroen nutter. He is currently transplanting a Rover V8 from a trashed MGB into the remains of a written-off 2CV. So you can see the sort of fun you can have.

Actually, what made me sell my Triumph Herald Convertible was when I noticed how little side impact protection it offered. None, really. My daughter was in the passenger seat and I had this vision of the car being T boned on her side. Not much that you can do about that in terms of stopping distances, etc.

I've always fancied a Citroen SM ever since seeing one waft past me whilst on holiday in the Dordogne years ago. I saw one recently advertised at just about £20,000 which seemed expensive, but still tempting. I guess the running cost would be fairly hefty but it would be lovely to die having said I'd owned one for a while.

Too true, I've regained the enjoyment I had working on cars in my youth with my MK2 Golf GTI. With hindsight buying cheap has meant more work but then that's the fun bit and I've enjoyed the problem solving as much as the spannering.

What is different today is the prevalence of internet forums meaning that any problem can be shared and solved in minutes flat, plus spares are plentiful via forums and ebay.

The only real problem I've got now is do I keep the GTI relatively as is and add mods for track use or start to refurb bits to get it back to OEM spec.

As per Teg I have a hankering to go the air cooled route and actually build an engine, something I've never done before. Perhaps I need that Beach Buggy I've always wanted......

I do like classics and have owned a couple of lesser ones but I did have this moment of realisation a few years ago when I noted that if I had any kind of accident whatsoever, I was going to die. Been difficult to regain the misty eyed sense of nostalgia ever since.

I have a hankering at the moment for a Karmann Ghia, which could possibly be fettled to accept some sort of Porsche engine. What ever I decide to do, the air cooled engine easy as pie to work on and the bits are cheap.

Good condition ones are at realistic prices, but the ones that need a little tinkering are relative pennies. Just got to find the "right" one.